S.O.S: SAVE OUR SUBSTATION
Simons considers future of No. 600
For almost 80 years, Street Railway Substation No. 600 has stood sentinel on 124 Street, just south of 107 Avenue.
Built in 1938, the handsome art deco building, with its flat roof, clinker brick and raised parapet, was like a miniature castle in the middle of the street.
Its elegant exterior, designed by city architect John Martland, a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute, hid a very practical little building. Inside was the equipment needed to boost electrical power to the streetcar that ran up and down 124 Street, from Jasper Avenue to 118 Avenue, and eventually, all the way north to what was then the town of Calder.
“The streetcar was a major part of the residential development in the area,” says Colin K. Hatcher, archivist with the Edmonton Radial Railway Society and coauthor of Edmonton’s Electric Transit.
The streetcar, he says, first reached 124 Street in 1910, and allowed development of new northwest neighbourhoods such as Westmount and Groat Estates.
Even after the streetcar line was closed in 1947 and replaced with electric trolleys, Substation No. 600 kept on working, making sure the trolley lines had enough juice to complete their runs.
But since 2009, when the last electric trolley was retired, the building has been sitting empty.
Last week, Edmonton city council served notice that it intends to designate the structure a municipal historic resource, a heritage status that protects it from future demolition. That was easy enough, since the city itself owned the building.
Once that happens, the city plans to sell the site for some kind of commercial development. The asking price has yet to be determined.
“We anticipate there will be interest,” says city heritage planner Scott Ashe.
Still, figuring out a way to repurpose the building — and land on which it sits — won’t be so easy.
Despite the building’s dramatic front view and sky-high ceiling, the structure itself is surprisingly small. Although it’s roughly as tall as a 21/2-storey house, the substation has just one level above grade.
And it has a footprint of just 7.5 metres by nine metres, or approximately 67.5 square metres above grade. (That’s about 725 square feet, the size of a one-bedroom apartment.)
The basement below is about the same size. But the lot is bigger — 15 metres wide by 44 metres deep.
Right now, the rear of the property is being leased out as parking for neighbouring businesses.
But someone who purchased the site from the city would, in theory, be able to develop behind or above the existing building, provided, says Ashe, that they committed to leave the front face of the building intact.
With its solid construction and its prime location, in the heart of 124 Street’s burgeoning restaurant and shopping district, it’s easy enough to re-imagine the building as a café, hair salon, boutique or even an unusual private home.
“We’re going to leave it up to the prospective owner,” says Ashe. “But ideally, we’d like to see a use that allowed public access to the building.”
The city has already remediated the surrounding land, says Butch Balch, maintenance co-ordinator for LRT facilities with Edmonton Transit. (“There would have been a lot of nasty chemicals here in the early part of this century,” he says.)
Still, turning the substation from an industrial facility to a new use will take courage, creativity and a lot of cash.
There’s a danger that the city won’t find the right buyer in a hurry, which could leave the building sitting vacant for a good while yet.
Still, at a time when 124 Street is struggling to retain some of its heritage character, it’s good to see the city stepping up to designate and protect this charming piece of our history, one of Edmonton’s few remaining art deco buildings.
Meanwhile, a full 70 years after the 124 Street streetcar line stopped operating, the city is now trying to round up the billions it needs to build a new higher-tech streetcar line, connecting the downtown with the west end, crossing 124 Street at Stony Plain Road.
We’re going backward to go forward, recreating some of the same sort of transit infrastructure we happily paved over all those years ago.
We’re left with Substation No. 600, still standing sentinel, to remind us of the days when Edmonton desired street cars with enough passion to erect stalwart brick castles just to house the equipment that kept them humming along.